A Study In Humanity
by pseudo-vulture
Summary: Afghanistan had changed John Watson more than he'd ever expected and living with a bad tempered vampire is not going to help... (Spoilers for Being Human UK series three onwards, Sherlock S01E01, rating is paranoia.)
1. Chapter 1

**Basically the fact that Mark Gatiss plays both Mycroft and Mr Snow gave me some peculiar head-canon. It progressed into this. Does stray from canon fairly often, so if you don't like that, just don't read it. I just liked the idea that the Holmes' brothers are vampires, it sort of explains some of their stranger idiosyncrasies...****  
**

* * *

An old accomplice had once told Sherlock about working in hospitals. If you had enough control, they were the perfect environments. You could walk around for hours without seeing any sunlight. Of course, if a hospital was good, a morgue was better; they were mostly in places with a severe lack of windows. And no-one would notice if a corpse left a few pints of blood short.

Sherlock picked up his riding crop and pulled on his coat, protecting his pale hands and neck from exposure to the violent sun.

He strode out of St Bart's, keeping to the most shaded side of the street, walking to the tiny apartment completely unbecoming of a vampire of his stature. Unfortunately, that's what came of being, and Sherlock hated this word, _nice_. He didn't particularly care for wealth or material possessions but this place was frankly demeaning.

He could quite easily get much nicer rooms but with the pathetic pay-check from the hospital and most of his cases being done _pro bono _in an attempt at redemption, Sherlock couldn't afford it without a roommate. And for a several thousand year old vampire, a roommate was much easier said than actually found.

* * *

John stared at those same walls and ceiling every day. He hated this place. At least in Afghanistan he'd had something to do. These days he drifted around so aimlessly. That day... It had changed him. More than just his shoulder and leg. That _thing_ had killed so many of his friends. And what it had done to him, so much worse.

The psychiatrists didn't understand. They thought it was just PTSD, his mind substituting one terrible event for another. They hadn't seen the creature tear the throats out of people they knew, good people.

John screwed his eyes shut for a few seconds. He needed to find somewhere better to stay. It would be full moon again soon and he wouldn't let that happen to him again. He couldn't.

Finally, John decided to go out, if only for something to do. He limped out of the tiny room to get some fresh air, into the cold London morning.

* * *

Why was he here? Mitchell had thought when George had staked him it would be the end of his tortured existence.

All he remembered was the stake... Then this. Waking up in an unfamiliar room with no memory of how he'd gotten here. It had been years since he'd been to London. Most of it wasn't much better than when he'd lived here with Herrick. Mitchell felt an involuntary snarl forming on his face at the thought of him. Too many memories lingered around the other, thankfully dead, vampire.

It was 2013. Two whole years after that night. Where was George when he was needed? Probably still back in Berry with Nina and Annie... And the baby. Mitchell knew he probably wouldn't be welcome back there with a kid in the house. But... But he needed to talk to his friends, even if it was just for one last time. He could find somewhere if they didn't want him back, he guessed.

Mitchell wandered out of his hotel room to look for a phone box.

* * *

**Don't give me that look. I liked Mitchell. If Herrick can come back, so can he. Alex, Tom and Hal will be involved in the near future. Also, I will get around to updating my other fics soon, I've just had a lot of college work to do recently.**


	2. Chapter 2

**AN: I have used lines from A Study In Pink in this chapter. I still don't own them, regrettably. Another lack of canon warning for after this chapter though**

**Vampgirl67: well guessed...**

* * *

Mitchell buried his hands in his pockets, having not realised how cold it was. He found himself dearly missing his old gloves.

There had to be a phone box round here somewhere; surely they hadn't all gone.

After another ten minutes of walking around aimlessly, he finally found one. The usual sort of rusted box, it's red paint peeling, with most of the glass smashed out and graffiti all over the rest it. Bits of old gum covered the inside. Mitchell shivered. Mobile phones were so much... Cleaner.

"Hello?" a posh voice answered the phone, one Mitchell didn't recognise.

"Um... Hi," Mitchell said, suddenly nervous despite himself. "I'm looking for George Sands or Nina Pickering, are they there?"

The man hesitated.

"Have I got the wrong number or something?"

"No, no, they used to live here." he said hurriedly. Something about the way the man had said 'used to' struck a chord of worry.

"Did they leave another address?" he said, trying to keep his tone even.

The posh man was hesitating again. Eventually, Mitchell heard him inhale deeply.

"They were both killed two years ago." he said quietly in a detatched sort of way. Whoever this man was couldn't have known them that well, if he'd even met either of them.

Mitchell screwed his eyes shut and leaned against a wall of the phone box. "What about their kid?" he whispered, barely able to force the words out.

"Eve." the man said, this time sounding more upset. "She... She died in an explosion."

Mitchell knew Annie must be gone too. She'd never let anything happen to a baby.

He slammed the phone back onto the stand and walked out of the phone box, down the street.

All that time he'd spent trying to find a way to come back and after all that... They were gone, dead. For two years. So where did that leave him?

* * *

"John Watson, over here!"

John heard a familiar voice yell from a bench several metres away from him. Someone he'd known in the army?

"John!"

His eyes widened as he approached the figure on the bench.

"Mike Stamford?" John hesitated. "It can't be you... You're dead!"

The younger man who couldn't possibly be there grinned sheepishly. "Yeah, funny how things turn out isn't it?"

John blinked a few times, wondering if he'd gone completely insane. "I went to your funeral..."

"I saw you there. Didn't know you were... One of them."

"I'm not... I mean, I wasn't, not until recently." John winced, thinking back to the previous month. It was nothing short of a miracle no-one had died.

Stamford grinned again. John always remembered that grin from when they'd been students. Then Stamford had died in a car crash just before they'd graduated.

"How are you here?"

"I'm a ghost, John." Stamford said, slightly reproachful.

* * *

"Why are you here? Last I heard you were abroad somewhere getting shot at, what happened?"

"I got shot."

"So what about you? Staying in town?"

"Can't afford London on an army pension." And he knew he shouldn't stay where there are so many people.

"And you couldn't bear to be anywhere else. Not the John Watson I know."

"I'm not the John Watson you know." John muttered, mind going back to the attack.

"Couldn't Harry help?"

John almost laughed. Yeah, turn up at his sister's claiming to be a _werewolf? _That would make even her stay off the booze.

"I don't know, get a flat share or something?"

"Come on, who'd want me for a flatmate?"

Stamford laughed.

"What?"

"You're the second person to say that to me today."

* * *

"How fresh?"

"Just in." Molly said. Sherlock smiled slightly but didn't look up. "57, natural causes. Used to work here. I knew him, he was nice."

As if that would make a difference. Sherlock smirked again and waited for her to leave. The second the door shut his eyes blackened and he grinned as his fangs sunk into the corpses' neck.


	3. Chapter 3

**Still using lines that were in Study** **In Pink, that will probably stop soon. As this has got, like, vampires and stuff, I'm using a different** **crime when it gets to that.**

It had been days since Mitchell had woken up in the hotel room. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't seem to find his way back to the room. Not that it mattered; he seemed to need even less sleep than before now.

The world felt empty, even in the crowded London streets he found himself wandering down. He couldn't bring himself to face the grief, not yet at least. Mitchell prefered being numb, it made more sense somehow, especially now. Even the thirst seemed frozen with the rest of his feelings. Not gone exactly, just... Dulled.

He silently thought about what he could do.

Option one; carry on wandering aimlessly, like a ghost, until someone stuck another stake in his chest.

Option two; find the only other person in London he actually knew.

* * *

The man who followed Stamford in had been in the army, Sherlock noticed. He could smell the battlefield on him. Of course, his haircut, the tan lines around his wrists and various other signs showed it in more humanly obvious ways.

...And he was something else. How could he have been in the army if he changed every month?

Or it could be the reason he was no longer in the army. That would explain the limp... Wait no, psychosomatic limp. So he'd probably been discharged just after the werewolf attack. Probably at the same time as something else.

"Bit different from my day." He said quietly. So he trained here. that made him a doctor. Might explain how he was bitten.

"You've no idea." Stamford smirked.

Sherlock turned to Stamford. "Has he got a phone? Mine's got no signal."

"What's wrong with a landline?" He said, raising an eyebrow.

"I prefer to text."

"Here." The army doctor said.

"He's an old friend of mine. John Watson."

"Afghanistan or Iraq?" Sherlock asked, not looking up from the phone.

"Sorry?"

"Which was it? Afghanistan or Iraq?"

"Afghanistan. How did you..."

A young woman opened the door, holding a mug at arms length.

"Ah, Molly, thank you." He took the mug and looked at her. "What happened to the lipstick?"

"It wasn't working for me."

"Really, I thought it was a big improvement." Sherlock said thoughtfully. "Your mouths too... Small, now."

"Ok" she said timidly.

He took a sip of the warmed up blood in the mug. He gave a disgusted look and put it down. AB positive. No matter how many times he told her, it was always AB positive.

"How do you feel about violin?"

"Sorry, what?"

"I play the violin when I'm thinking. Sometimes I don't talk for days on end. Will that bother you? Potential flatmates should know the worst about each other."

"You told him about me?" John said, turning to Stamford.

"Not a word." The ghost smiled.

"Then who said anything about flatmates?"

"I did. Told Mike this morning that I must be a difficult man to find a flat mate for. Now here he is, just after lunch with an old friend, clearly just home from military service in Afghanistan." He said, pulling his scarf on. "Wasn't a difficult leap."

"How did you know about Afghanistan?"

Sherlock ignored the question. Stupid people everywhere. "Got my eye on a nice little place in central London. Together we ought to be able to afford it. Meet there tomorrow evening at seven o'clock. Got to dash, think I left my riding crop in the mortuary." Sherlock allowed himself a smirk at John's expression then strode towards the door.

"Is that it?"

"Is that what?" Sherlock said, vaguely annoyed at being delayed.

"We've only just met and we're going to go look at a flat?"

"Problem?"

The former soldier shook his head in disbelief. "We don't know a thing about each other, I don't know where we're meeting, I don't even know your name."

It was probably time to get him to shut up. "I know you're an army doctor and that you've been invalided home from Afghanistan and you've got a brother who's worried about you but you won't go to him for help because you don't approve of him, possibly because he's an alcoholic, more likely because he recently walked out on his wife. And I know that your therapist thinks that your limp is psychosomatic, quite correctly I'm afraid. 'S enough to be going on, don't you think?"

Sherlock walked towards the door again. "The name's Sherlock Holmes and the address is 2-2-1-B Baker Street." He winked at the doctor, said "Afternoon" to Stamford then stormed out.

"Yeah." Stamford said finally. "He's always like that."


End file.
